EXHIBITION EXPLORES THE VISUAL CULTURE OF GERMANY DURING THE WEIMAR PERIOD

Contact: Kate McShea Ewen, (617) 495-2397
Released:September 15, 1998

Cambridge, Massachusetts-The special exhibition A Laboratory of Modernity: Image and Society in the Weimar Republic will be on display at the Busch-Reisinger Museum from October 31, 1998 through January 10, 1999. The exhibition, organized to accompany Professor Eric Rentschler's fall course at Harvard in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures "Weimar Cinema: The Laboratory of Modernity," explores aspects of the dynamic, avant-garde visual culture of Germany between the two world wars, including many direct and indirect references to film. Seven extraordinary vintage photographs by László Moholy-Nagy, lent by Robert and Gayle Greenhill of New York City, will anchor the exhibition, which will also include works by artists such as Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, Otto Dix, George Grosz, August Sander, John Heartfield, Josef Albers, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Herbert Bayer, and others. A Laboratory of Modernity has been selected by Tawney Becker, curatorial assistant of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Graham Bader, graduate student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard.

Although the short-lived and turbulent Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was a period at times troubled by political and economic instability, ultimately succumbing to the Nazi rise to power in Germany, new media and technologies emerged, fueling the vibrant cultural scene, particularly in the cities. The fall of the imperial regime and its institutions at the end of World War I infused the arts with new vitality. The founding of the Bauhaus, a progressive school for art, architecture, and design, in 1919 heralded a new era for art education, production, and industrial design. Modernism took hold, and avant-garde culture flourished even as the democracy and the economy were weak. It was a time of conflicts and contrasts: new artistic movements and trends struggled with broadening political and social conservatism. The 1920s saw the efflorescence of the photo-illustrated press, and the freshness of the new media-photojournalism, documentary film, broadcasting, and sound recording-in works from this period are felt to this day.

A Laboratory of Modernity is structured around three key themes that investigate use of materials and technique as well as content. The first section Montage: Abstraction and Politics features artistic explorations of the montage technique in collage, prints, and photographs. The flood of technologically recorded reality in both image and sound made suddenly available to the public triggered a splintering of vision seen in the various types of montage witnessed in literature and theater as well as the visual arts. Moholy's manipulation of light in his photograms and dadaist collages by Hannah Höch and Kurt Schwitters evoke the excitement of early experimentation, opening a path for later political application in Heartfield's scathing photomontages for the Berlin-based Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (workers' illustrated paper) and Lissitzky's dynamic use of the technique in his Catalogue for the Soviet Pavilion for the International Press Exhibition Cologne 1928.

The Modern Subject takes various forms in the second grouping, which is divided into sections focused on figures and types, artist portraits, and the mannequin or doll-like figure. Here exploration of the figure reveals the artists' varied approaches to process and subject-whether viewed through the sober lens of the "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit) in realistic portraits by Rudolf Schlichter or Karl Hubbuch, in Otto Dix's intense self-portrait, or in the satirical caricature of Hitler as a barbarian by George Grosz. Beyond these prints and drawings, the photography in this section-penetrating documentary photographs of the German people as catalogued by August Sander and Erna Lendvai-Dircksen, the inspired manipulation of the image by Herbert Bayer and Moholy-Nagy, the unusual viewpoint in Werner Feist's Head (1929), and Joseph Albers' and Lyonel Feininger's investigations of the mannequin-exemplify the new range of approaches to the figure that the camera made possible.

The Weimar period is popularly identified with 1920s Berlin, and it was in the city where culture boomed. Artistic incentive to experiment and explore also drives the Urban Visions presented in the third group of the exhibition. Moholy-Nagy was one of the key members of the Bauhaus faculty and proponent of "productive creation," not reproduction; his ground-breaking Bauhaus Book No. 8: Painting, Photography, Film (1925) in which Paul Citroen's photomontage Metropolis I (1923) is reproduced, is included in the exhibition. Experiments with distorting and often dizzying angles and abstraction are captured in architectural views by Moholy-Nagy and his wife Lucia Schulz Moholy as well as in photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch and a student of the Bauhaus, Iwao Yamawaki. Grosz's socio-critical street scenes reflect his sharp political views whereas Herbert Bayer's mock-ups for a movie house and a multi-media building still carry the freshness of ideas of the brainstorming architect-designer.

A Laboratory of Modernity will provide the public with a first glimpse at several recent acquisitions by the Busch-Reisinger and the Fogg, including exciting photography from this period as well as a few rarely seen examples of work by women photographers. The exhibition is supported with funds from the John M. Rosenfield Teaching Exhibition Fund.

RELATED EVENTS

Gallery talks
Gallery talks are free to the public with the price of Art Museums' admission. Admission is free on Wednesdays and Saturday mornings. Hearing assists are available for gallery talks; arrangements should be made beforehand by phoning (617) 495-8286. To request a sign language interpreter, the public should call (617) 495-2397 using Massachusetts Telephone Relay Service 1-800-439-2370, preferably three weeks in advance of the gallery talk.

Saturday, November 7, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Christine Mehring, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Sunday, November 8, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Christine Mehring, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Saturday, November 28, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Graham Bader, graduate student, Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Sunday, November 29, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Graham Bader, graduate student, Department of History of Art and Architecture.

Saturday December 5, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Sarah Miller, Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern, Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Sunday, December 20, 2:00 p.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Tawney Becker, curatorial assistant, Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Saturday, January 9, 11:30 a.m., Busch-Reisinger Museum
with Tawney Becker, curatorial assistant, Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Film Series
Weimar Cinema
Tuesdays, September 22 through December 15, 1998, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, main hall
Free, for more information please call (617) 495-4700.

September 22
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), directed by Robert Wiene

September 29
Destiny (1920), directed by Fritz Lang

October 6
Nosferatu (1922), directed by F.W. Murnau

October 13
The Last Laugh (1924), directed by F.W. Murnau

October 20
The Joyless Street (1925), directed by G.W. Pabst

October 27
Secrets of a Soul (1926), directed by G.W. Pabst

November 3
Metropolis (1927), directed by Fritz Lang

November 10
Berlin, Symphony of a Big City (1927), directed by Walter Ruttman

November 17
The White Hell of Pitz Palü (1929), directed by A. Franck and G.W. Pabst

November 24
M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang

December 1
The Blue Angel (1930), directed by Joseph von Sternberg

December 8
Mädchen in Uniform (1931), directed by Leontine Sagan

December 15
The Blue Light (1932), directed by Leni Riefenstahl

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The Harvard University Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For general information, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea Ewen at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please call (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and to all on Saturday mornings and all day on Wednesdays. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June; Wednesdays only in July and August. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m. The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.